Social networking environments generally provide search utilities that enable a user to search for other users by providing search criteria, thus filtering out those users that do not meet the provided search criteria. These search utilities are useful in that they enable users to identify friends, family, or other users meeting specific characteristics. After a user leaves the search page, however, users not meeting the search criteria are shown to the first user as part of the general networking environment.
Social networking environments also enable a user to block specific other users, so that the blocked users cannot interact with the user who did the blocking. A block must be applied individually to each user, so that blocking multiple people can become a chore.